We are "Before our God, to seek of him a right way for us, and for our little ones... For the hand of our God is upon all them for good that seek him" Ezra 8:21-22
"Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near." Isaiah 55:6

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

"Mommy! There's a green spider in the bathtub! Do you want to come and see it? Come on, Mommy! It's a green spider and it's MOVING!"

Since this was such an urgent and exciting matter, and Ricka had eaten enough to fall asleep on the job, I put her in her bassinet and followed Emma to the kids bathroom. She did a little dance in excitement as I peered into the bathtub at her latest find. "Can you give it to me, Mommy?! Please, can I have it?" she begged. I scooped the badly maimed grasshopper up and carefully put in in Emma's outstretched palm and then went to find my camera.

Emma slowly followed me, never taking her eyes off her treasure. "Isn't he nice, Mommy? He's soo cute! Don't you think he's cute Mommy?" I assured her he was and took a few pictures of her. Then the rest of the kids came in and Emma proudly showed them her bug.

"Can I hold him?" Dolly asked as she was already trying to get the insect from Emma's shirt sleeve to her own. When Emma realized she was being relieved of her pet, a short scuffle ensued and order was restored once the bug was returned. Dolly tried a different approach, "Can we keep him, Mommy? We can put him in a little cage, and give him grass to eat..." Emma's eyes lit up and suddenly they were best friends on a mission.

("Oh! That is a real one.")

Then PC came by... "Oh! That is a real one. The other ones don't have wings. Let's feed him to the chickens - they would like to eat him!" "No!" both girls screamed in protest and then Dolly remembered that we don't have any chickens. "It's ok, Emma, We don't have any chickens, so he can't do that." After that they all traipsed outside to 'make a house'.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

This is the new memory verse, and we asked the kids on the way home from meeting what they thought it meant. Of course they all answered, "I donno." so we took smaller steps...
"What does it mean to change not?"
PC: That it's the same?
Dolly: It means that God is God and he's not gonna change.
"Ok, who can tell us what God is? Can you think of a verse that might tell you?"
Dolly: "God is love"!
PC: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him shall have everlasting life." So, He's gonna love us forever!
"So, what is 'forever'?"
Emma: Forever and forever and forever.
Dolly: Never gonna stop.
PC: Always!

"Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever."Hebrews 13:8

"The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee."Jeremiah 31:3

Have you ever just stopped to really think about what these verses mean?

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

I started making my teriyaki sauce marinade at about noon today. First I measured out the soy sauce, and then got sidetracked warming up leftover pizza for lunch. Once I got the kids up to the table and served, I got back to the sauce project. I started measuring out the sugar, got halfway through that when I ran out of sugar in the main container. As I headed to the pantry, thankful there was a refill sugar to grab, one of the kids had some urgent question that they insisted needed my attention. I answered the question as I walked back to the kitchen with the sugar. Please note that my pantry is a whole eleven feet from my kitchen stove (and yes, I measured that distance especially for this post).

When I got back to the stove, I couldn't remember how much sugar I'd already put into my pot. Eventually I figured out how much more sugar I needed to add (that involved dissolving and tasting) and I turned the burner on to start heating the sauce to a boil. But by then the kids were done eating and I was sidetracked with washing them up, stirring the sauce when I remembered and being thankful that I was supposed to heat it on a low burner setting each time I stirred it and found it was still unburnt.

Then the phone rang - it was Tina. While I was talking to her I discovered Butler had a dirty diaper so I changed him while I talked to her on the phone. By this time it was almost nap time, so I put him to bed and walked back to the kitchen just in time to find my teriyaki sauce had finally come to a boil and was about to boil over. It did start to boil over as I moved the pot off the heat and then it continued to boil over for a couple seconds as it cooled down. So, I had a huge mess to clean up on the stove top, but I was thankful it was a glass top and that I'd wiped it clean before I started the teriyaki project and that made it a little easier to clean. Besides, it gave me more time to talk to my sister (I've found that you can talk and clean at the same time very effectively).

It wasn't very long before it was time to feed Ricka again so I put the rest of the kids down for naps and sat down at my desk to reply to an e-mail while she nursed. When Ricka was happy again, I took the meat out of the refrigerator, measured out the teriyaki sauce, mixed it into the meat and then started putting the ice cream buckets of meat (there were four of them) back into the fridge to marinate. The second bucket I grabbed, slipped out of my hand and fell onto the floor perfectly upright. The impact had split the bucket down the side and around the bottom, so when I went to pick the bucket up it started to dump. Then I was thankful that I had half a dozen more ice cream buckets in the cupboard just inches away. That made salvaging the meat that didn't dump out easier.

I put the undumped meat into a new bucket, picked up and rinsed off the two cups or so of meat that did dump out, added them to the bucket and measured out more teriyaki sauce which made me thankful that I'd made an extra large batch of sauce today instead of making exactly what I thought we'd need for my marinade. Of course, I don't have a lot of extra teriyaki sauce now, but I didn't have to start over either.

And when I got to cleaning up the huge puddle of teriyaki sauce that leaked out of the cracked bucket, I was thankful that the bucket dumped AFTER I'd put the kids down for naps so I wouldn't have to worry about them walking in it.

It's only 3:30 and ALL five of my kids are asleep! And that is definitely something to be thankful for.